The Public Defender of Georgia is responding to the delay in consideration of the draft law on safety at work. The draft law was submitted by the Government as early as 1 June 2017, though it has only been adopted at first reading. The second reading, scheduled for 5 February 2018 in the leading Committee, has been canceled due to the Government’s failure to agree on the main provisions of the draft law. The delay in the process shows that neither the Government nor the Parliament has properly realized the need for the adoption of the draft law. In addition, there are significant shortcomings in the draft law, but instead of their elimination, there is a serious danger that the existing text may even be made worse, which undoubtedly deserves a negative assessment.

It should be noted that safety at workis primarily a matter of human rights. Every employee has the right to work in a safe working environment where his/her health and life is protected. Employers have certain obligations in this regard today. The main purpose of the draft law is to ensure fulfillment of the obligations. The Public Defender calls on the Government and the Parliament of Georgia to discuss safety at workin the context of human rights and not to make compromises regarding human rights, the life and health of the employees. According to the draft law:

1. The law shall only apply to severe and harmful works, which also contain significant threats. Simultaneous introduction of these two criteria extremely restricts the areas covered by the law, whereas every employee has the right to safety at work and this should be ensured for everyone. The draft law does not set new standards of safety at work, but only ensures implementation of the existing standards in practice by introducing a coercive mechanism, which makes it completely unacceptable to restrict the areas covered by the law;

2. Sanctions are extremely low and cannot ensure achievement of the purpose of the law. In particular, the violation of each condition of safety at work leads to a warning for the first time and to a fine (50 GEL) in case it is repeated, which is absolutely insufficient. Furthermore, violation of certain obligations does not lead to any responsibility at all;

3. A service of the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs responsible for inspecting working conditions represents a supervisory body. Unfortunately, the law does not establish an institution with an independent, flexible and strong mandate, which is a serious challenge. The draft law also does not provide for the allocation of additional funds from the state budget or strengthening of the Ministry with relevant staff, which greatly reduces the possibility of effective enforcement of the law;

4. The supervisory body will be able to inspect an entrepreneur without a court order only through selective control and once in a calendar year, which is a serious barrier and does not ensure effective enforcement of the law. The judge shall issue an order only if the supervisory body submits relevant information about reasonable and substantiated doubt on the violation of the requirements of the law by the entrepreneur. Naturally, the supervisory body will find it very difficult to obtain such information without inspection. The judge is obliged to send a notification and case materials to the entrepreneur in advance, after which the latter submits hi/her own opinion in writing. If the judge still issues an order after the above procedure, the supervisory body shall be entitled to inspect the entrepreneur only in relation to the issue indicated in the judge's order. If the entrepreneur does not allow the supervisory body to inspect the enterprise, he/she will be warned, while if he/she does the same again, he/she will be fined 200 GEL. The draft law says nothing about the following cases of similar action, and the judge's order is valid for only 15 days. If the supervisory body still manages to inspect the entrepreneur and find a violation, it will need to obtain judge’s new order to check later whether the violation was eradicated or not, which does not provide basis for optimism.

In addition to the above mentioned issues, there are other important shortcomings in the draft law, which makes it difficult to have expectations for essential changes in the existing alarming situation in the field of safety at work. Obviously, adoption of the law should serve the purpose of radically changing the situation and protecting the life and health of the employees in the workplace, and not creating an invalid document that cannot bring real changes.